Introductory Mumbling, Typhoon Rumbling and the Hotaka Humbling

Note: Started writing this Monday, it is now Thursday:( I have had very little or no wifi/data for about a week now so apologies for the tardiness.

some more rambling for you all to read while on the toilet or waiting for a bus or if you have been waiting eagerly for the next edition (seek help).

Recently had to introduce myself to a hall filled with about 100 people. Please imagine the sight and sounds of a sweaty, sunburnt, extremely foreign individual, with a ponytail to boot, standing up with a microphone in a large hall BUTCHERING the local language, mumbling something along the lines of 'ehh..watashi wa Callum, ALT desu.... eh Onegai Shimas!, complementing/patching it up with some english and laughter as well as a very unprofessional shrug at the end. Get a few 'that is great Japanese' from the new colleagues as i laugh at the image above. Note constant, visible confusion with the name 'callum', the two L's really throw a spanner in the works. An ongoing theme, having done the same introduction (with the aid of a whiteboard) 4/5 times already in the past week. The confusion from staff to student to society itself at the notion of such a name is akin to reactions to a functional ouija board. Shock, terror, awe, turned heads. Attempts to have the name repeated back inevitably return solitary unsure whispers. Enter: Ireland, a country never before heard of, oft confused with Iceland. Compounded confusion followed by a burst of chatter upon exiting the rooms. It will be interesting to begin explaining concepts such as 'hurling' or 'gaeilge', excited watch some brains simply tune out entirely and eyes glaze over in futile attempts to engage the listeners.

Fun news today, STRONG TYPHOON NUMBER 10 is on its way! What this means i have no idea but i received a lovely email saying that we should stock up on food and prepare for flooding, landslides and a closure of roads, rails and workplaces :D Politely worded letter warning of potential disaster, brilliant start to another muggy, humid Monday. Then again, a bit of rain and wind could bring the temperature down for a few day which might be worth the cost of a few flooded communities here and there (clearly joking). Will have to load up on onions and meat this evening in the calm before the possible storm. Some of the colleagues had great big smiles today asking 'oh, so this is your first typhoon! wow wow, please register your details with the emergency broadcast systems!' :D

In other fun news, apparently the fire, which i made light of maybe two weeks ago now, which turned out tragically to be the end of two peoples lives, actually turned out to be an arson attack by a mentally unwell youth who got sick of his neighbours making noise. The story has been revealed over many weeks so please forgive the gallows humour and lack of insight, i do not mean to make light of any of the actual individuals involved just trying to bring some levity to a crushing tragedy.

Getting humbled at Hotaka:

TLDR: Got fucked by a large mountain, lack of preparation led to a delirious 14 hour ramble, followed by a self induced moral inquest.

What started as an enthusiastic stroll up a hill on a calm summer morning transformed into a physical and mental battle against rocks, solar rays, thunderstorms and oxygen itself.

Wake up nice and early to climb the third highest mountain in japan, 1 hour drive, about 20 minutes of pre-research which tells me the total walk should be about 8 hours, grand. Have to be home and showered for 6 for dinner plans with colleagues so 12 hours should be plenty of time. Note difficulty is labeled 'strenuous' but these are all subjective right? Equipped with some water, an apple, 2 rice balls, some electrolyte concoction and dressed in a tshirt, cap and well worn swim shorts, begin walking at 6:00. Start highly enthusiastic, absolutely zoom through the initial road up and first forested path. Comfortably warm morning, lots of people out on the same route, fully loaded with tents, hiking poles and the full shebang. The next section is a beautiful valley cut out by an early stage river with steep banks on either side, eroding its way back up to its own source, very cannibalistic in a way. use some chains to keep close along the edge of the path and climb a few ladders to get up to a rocky crossing. Back into foresty/jungly terrain again and begin to notice the heat starting to seep into the valley and the humidity rising in the wooded area. After a steep ascent it begins to level out and the shade becomes more sparse, exposing the sun to the pasty hairless chimp creature walking below it. While the sun may be the reason that everything is alive, humming with life and all that jazz, it saps the energy from you like nothing else except its polar (literally) opposite. Start to sip on the water and eventually reach the bottom of an extremely steep chute. This chute is filled with rock, ranging in size from large boulder to scree (for the geography nerds). Take a little pause and look up, kind of thinking to myself that i can see the ridge at the base of the summit of the peak. Confident with this delusion and feeling some haste considering it took 3 hours to get this far and it should only take 5 total (!) to reach the top, i rush to the right hand side of the scree chute which is in the shade and begin clambering mindlessly up.

The reality of the situation sets in about an hour into this climb. I spot a fellow descending the chute from a distance. He appears to be walking and sliding/falling down in equal parts. We turn towards each other and have a short conversation. I begin to realise the scale of the chute since this rendezvous take a solid half an hour to be accomplished - one walk/sliding, one clambering on all fours nearly. I say hello as he slides/stumbles down a little ridge into the mini valley i am in.

'how are you, all good?'

'oh yes, very good, nearly finished! i start yesterday! where are you from?

'ireland!

'ooooh iceland! ok that is nice. so you will sleep up there tonight yes:D

' ah no i will head back home after

' ooooh hahahahaha that is hard! best of luck!

'ah it will be grand, safe down'

Famous last words.

Resume clambering. By this point i realise what i initially though was the ridge was just a beautiful turn in the chute. the chute itself actually extended way way up into the background of the sky. decide it is best to not look at that ridgeline after a while because it will not get closer no matter my exertions.

Picture the following image: gollum from the opening sequence of 'LOTR: Return of the King', slowly crawling out of the rock cavern he has been hiding in for hundreds of years to go hunt for his precious. A concussed gecko or similar lizard, slowly ambling up a stone wall or paving stone, alternate front and rear appendages moving in sluggish synchronicity. This is the image you need to imagine for the remainder of this ascent. A sweaty grimacing pale spectre on all fours crawling up mounds of rocks trying not to 127 hours itself between sliding rocks. the whole next two hours can be summarised with these images. Tracking the shade as it slowly receded in order to avoid the sun take a few breaks up this thing and try to calculate how high up i am and whether the altitude will have any effect on me, since i am apparently human after all. Legs and arms are pretty much completely numb at this point and the head is beginning to get considerably dizzier. Have a bit of food and stare out across the valley below. From where i am sat, i seem to be higher than any of the mountains across the valley and am up high enough from where i started to begin triggering my wariness of heights. Start to picture what sliding down this hill might look like on a toboggan/mattress or something like this, could be great craic until the very bottom. Despite the amount of progress up... the ridgeline is in the exact same position, like some sort of desert mirage, always there but never closer. Can see some other people below making their ascent, in the sun but at a faster rate than me perhaps. that will not do, oh no. now that all enthusiasm has left my limbs it is a grim race between me and these unknowing stragglers. It would be truly shameful to be caught up on with such a headstart. resume the ascent. hands test the rocks, legs push the weight, really focus on not dislodging any of those bigger ones, try not to get ankles stuck in between tumbling ones and repeat. scramble up like the facking iguana running from those snakes in that nature documentary some years back. Go until completely numb. Take a sip of water. Look down, theyre closer? Look up, the ridge has not moved? Ok, just repeat now for much longer. Clouds begin forming below and above me clouding my view of the ridge and the below competitors. No reference points now so just continue. Begin realising i am actually inside a cloud and its moving up with me, i am inside the process of convection which is a little bit trippy. Also begin realising that this is the warmer air moving up, meaning i am not even at the point where the air begins to cool off, meaning.... i am not near the top, still. Continue plodding along inside this bubble. it clears and ascends the mountain completely (it moved a lot faster than me evidently) and this evasive ridgeline is seemingly not any closer. Thankfully the people below are now way below, they have stopped for lunch or a break or something. Continue the gollum crawl up and up and up, the slope only getting steeper. The rocks are now beginning to look a lot more vivid in their colours and vibrant to the touch. My thinking is definitely not clear here and i would say the altitude had an effect when looking back on it. I do not really have any cohesive thoughts, just continually going up and up until the chute starts to narrow. It is at this point that the ridgeline becomes more visible. I also notice to my great relief that there are arrows now too, pointing to what seem to be rocks placed in the formation of steps. Dismayed i squint and look up and down, noticing that the entire left hand side of the chute has a stair like element to it. I shuffle up the rest of the steps, no longer crawling on all fours like a dog or a gollum in a little bit of a grump coming to terms with the fact that the last two and a half hours of concentration and clambering were completely unneccessary. Note that the stair rocks have a really interesting bright green moss on them. leading all the way up to the ridgeline and the huts up there, like a yellow brick road. shuffling and panting, stopping every few steps finally make it to the ridgeline after 3 hours of skree scrambling.

Stop up at the ridge and have a look at some of the scenery, trying to get my head straight. Eat the rest of the food and slug away at the water for about 5 minutes then follow a sign that says Hotaka on it, assuming that it must lead to where im going. Climb up another steep ascent and reach a peak after about 25 minutes. At this point I am mildly confused as the peak across on the other side of the plateau is looking a lot higher than i was.... Fumble out a few words of japanese to a kindly trio who were following behind me; 'ehh... hotaka desu? or is ehh *point across* hotaka desu?'. Am kindly told that in fact this is 'small hotaka' not big hotaka. Plod back down the hill again, 20 minutes and start the real ascent, in a light confusion. Mildly cursing under my breath ascend the most rock-climby part of the whole mountain, dragging myself up chains and ladders and gashes in the jagged rock to reach another well worn trail. Ascending, meet some fellow whiteys and stop for a short conversation. During the course of this conversation realise i am rambling an awful lot about getting down in two hours or less to make a dinner appointment which i was probably very late for. My monologue recipient looks at me in a way which would suggest they were concerned for their own health as well as mine as i continue dragging my meat vehicle up the rocks. Bearing in mind that a bedraggled, sweaty fellow ranting about dinner plans in swim shorts and barefoot shoes at a height of 3000 meters is not normal, the lad handled it pretty well, assuring me i would be back down to the ridge in about 20 minutes. Fast forward 30 minutes and i make it to the peak where naturally it is completely cloudy and offers basically no aesthetic panoramic landscape with which i could feel some justification for the self induced suffering. Hang out on the shrine up there for 5/10 minutes, apparently the pile of rocks the shrine sits on was intentionally piled up exactly 1 metre in order for the mountain to be labeled 3190 metres, edging out another mountain which came in at 3189 metres. My only thought was who the fuck is climbing up this high piling up stones for the sake of spite. After playing with a functional lighter to see the affect of altitude on its function (it stopped it working), i began the descent. I was not particularly looking forward to the hellish boulder/scree field on the descent but at least i knew about the path. I stopped in at this little lodge on the ridge for a snickers and went to use the glamorous 'western style toilet' (a hole in the ground with a toilet seat on it).

Begin descending the boulder field. Again there is no need to describe it in detail, just imagine gollum doing the opposite of what he was doing earlier. About 1/3 of the way down the clouds cleared and exposed me to an absolutely scorching sun which metaphorically melted my pasty legs, turning them a lovely shade of salmon/lobster. Continue plodding downhill trying to calculate just how late i will be for the dinner. Calculations assumed a much higher downhil pace than uphill especially the final stretch of road. Calculations come in at roughly 1 hour late, not so bad. continue plodding, slowly the head haze is lifting as i descend which is nice but also making colours very vibrant again. I do not know what amount of it was caused by lack of food, strain on the body, dehydration, sun exposure or whatever else but the brain was in a very strange space on the way down. Tardiness calculations did not take into account the impending inclement climate spillage either. After a solid 2.5 hours descent, eventually make it back to the bottom of the boulder chute. Grateful that the worst (so i thought) of it was over start hammering away through the forest, The descent through this area was another hell, nothing compared to the ascent which was made in the early morning. Now mid-afternoon the level of humidity in the trees was suffocating. any water drank immediately sweated itself out (again thinking, why the fuck do we sweat when we need the water inside our bodies) and the brain started going hazy again. It was a relief to get back down to the little valley area, head was almost spinning at this point though. Descending the rather steep little trails and rock faces takes a lot longer than expected and there are many twists and turns i do not recall from the ascent, making it seem a whole lot longer.

Begin to reach the second to last section, another forest/jungle trail, again a lot more twists and turns than i remember when flying in high spirits through it in the other direction. To add a bit of an extra challenge into the mix, thunder has started to rumble overhead and the sun has passed behind the steep walls of the valley, which begins a process of darkening the trail. Rain starts to pound down now in good order, making the rocks underneath slippy and putting a stop to any hopes of a hasty return to the relative comfort of the car. by the time the end of this forested path begins to come to a close, consider oneself well and truly soaked through but still warm enough to have no need of the jacket which was hastily thrown in the backpack more than 12 hours earlier on a whim.

The mother of all thunder claps rumbles throughout the whole area and then the heavens really start coming down, washing the grime and just about everything else into swelling streams below. By this time have reached the first sign of civilisation: an unpaved gravel forest road. Knowing now that there is actually still at least 2 hours left on this road gives a strange of both joy and dread. The intensifying rain forces a quick stop to don the blue north face jacket (adorned over the backpack to protect the electronics inside). Something weird is happening with the dying light filtering through clouds, lightning strikes and then bouncing through forest growth overhead and off the orange gravel of the road below. It has both the hues of orange and green blending and interchanging depending the density of forest and again the colours are looking suspiciously vibrant and the brain is getting a real blast of stimulation. The rhythm of the final steps of this journey along the road induce an almost trance like state, with nothing existing but the sound of the rain pounding the jacket hood, the gravel and the jarring steps 1,2,1,2.

Start to have some very different thoughts now and with nothing but time really and a body which is in complete autopilot, retreating into the mind for the duration of the journey is almost inevitable. A lot of recency bias is involved and there is a lot of consideration given to what type of person one really is, whether ones view of oneself as a 'good person' holds up (It is very difficult to consider that you may not actually be a good person or even consider that you might in fact be tending toward a bad person. it is easy to just rationalise for yourself that yes you are a good person because it makes life pretty easy to continue with. What does good even mean? What does bad mean? Are there good people or are they just following some chemical/biological/cultural/societal incentive to be 'good'. Is there any way to measure it or quantify it, or is it just a case of 'you know it when you see it' or 'you know it when you feel it'? are these feelings socialised into us from a young age or is there some sort of universal good underneath it all? you could go around in this spiral for days and not reach any answer at all really. it is probably best to keep it simple and think how much suffering/pain/sadness or how much relief/happiness/joy you've brought into the world and kind of pile them onto a scale. when you are born you have a perfectly equal scale and then it starts to change from there. where to draw the line is another subjective decision. i recently took a lovely little quiz entitled 'how many slaves work for you' and i made a best guess judgement on the questions they ask in there - roughly 77 slaves work for me and my family along our consumption supply chain according to this measure. i did not know about this beforehand but now that i do know, how much of that responsibility do i bear? i did not willingly make the choice to force people into working for my consumption but i now knowingly support companies/organisations that do. does this tip my scale twoards bad? probably yeah, it is very easy to say 'well i have to eat and i have to wear clothes and i need a phone to live MY life, i did not set up this world this way, i was born into it, what choice do i really have here ay?' i can diffuse all the responsibility away and have a clear conscience, i can make a rational argument for the slaves. it is very difficult to accept that some actions which are just habitual in some sense cause suffering on the other end of the line. this is a distant suffering which i was blissfully ignorant of until i looked into it. so was my scale unaffected until i found out or was i unknowingly tipping the scale one way all that time. how can one even quantify all the good/bad, how much responsibility can you take for the things you are not aware of and, if made aware of them, should that affect your conscience? how do you quantify the level of suffering or joy and again is that even the correct criteria, how you make other people feel? almost impossible to get a full census or scale of the impact you have had on a person. i have been lucky in a sad sense of the word to have encountered some quite open and honest people who have been able to express the full range of their emotions and how they have been impacted as a result of my words or actions. it is quite sobering to realise a lot of the decisions you have intentionally made have caused harm. actions taken on an impulse out of curiosity or fear or any number of driving factors have impacted your own health as well as othes, both physical and mental/emotional. the damage you have caused to yourself is mirrored around you in some way and rather than halving it it doubles it upon reflection. choices you make about where to work lead to the propagation of and engagement in soulless machines, monuments to the pursuit of ambition and self interest regardless of the cost. increases in damage wrought are twisted so as to be framed as achievements and milestones. not so different to body count in a war, or some other morbid incentive, rewards granted for optimising those efforts and finding more effective, efficient ways to hit the milestone. weapons, alcohol, sugar, fast food, tobacco, gambling, all moral qualms soothed by the guise of 'people make choices, we offer them the best if they do make that choice'. I unfortunately agree with this sentiment, despite the above rant. people do make choices and people should be allowed to make choices, within reason though perhaps. good/bad becomes fuzzy again, how much of your willing participation in such an effort is weighed as a negative and who is to judge other than yourself, if it is all subjective. if you are raised in a warzone vs a peaceful suburb vs a monastery, how would your conception of what good/bad is change. would there be common ground? the only way i can think of to find an 'objective' definition of good/ bad is to continuously poll the entire population , what a drearisome world that would be. maybe i have just not been tuned in at all and everyone has an agreement, or we agree by voting and changing laws or by social cues but again, if these are constantly changing, where is the objectivity, something to plant a flag in?) or whether one is in fact completely morally ambivalent and acts only in ones own self interest with no real thought for others outside of what impacts them and what the gain or loss could be. Plenty of actions and decisions to reflect on with conflicting, contradictory and often confounding pieces of evidence in favour of every possible conclusion.

After some mental morality wrestling and a decent dent made in this forest road, begin to feel the weight of the darkness. The rain starts to slack off, encouraging a faster pace and eventually a fateful shedding of the jacket. Not 20 steps after this relief of getting the fully soaked rag off, at a crossroads, thunder begins to grumble and the air starts to feel heavy once more. Quickly check the directions as i have no bearing in the dark, and head off down the darker of the two roads. The silence is broken only by occasional thunder and the beginning of some rain. Start to realise, what could have been way too late in a more unfortunate alternate universe, that bears enjoy the night time and especially the dusk and this court jester has no bells to speak of. The next few hundred meters involve a lovely rendition of 'left right left' to give some sort of warning ahead. Then the rain starts again in earnest and no amount of left right lefting is going to be heard in good time. Slip on the jacket again and begin to have some lovely cold chills down the spine as it soaks back on. Finally reaching the end now as the lights of the car park start to come into view in the distance. naturally this is the paid parking and i opted for the free alternative so i still have about a kilometre to go. And naturally the final path through a small patch of forest, right above a drop to a river, has absolutely no lighting and it is now pitch black, thunderstorm raining and i have no torch due to my incredible skills of preparation :D I do not want to use my phone because the risk is the rain could very well get into it and wreak havoc.

The final 500meters through this forest path to the car park was by far the longest stretch of the journey. for the first while, a nice rope guides along the path so i understand how that feels underfoot. then the rope stops and im demoted to shuffling slowly and tapping through pitch blackness with my feet to feel out the path in front of me. all the respect in the world to the blind people out there (who will never read this so that is how you know i mean it) because it is extremely difficult to navigate with just foot tapping and arm waving in front of you to stop from bumping into trees or slipping down the slimy soil into the little swollen stream to the right. Luckily for me, there are some highly aggressive lighting strikes during which i can see the path ahead and scurry forward like a little rat for a few metres until the lights go out again. after a long while of this and plenty of (maniacal?) chuckles along the way i reach the small arch to the car park. the final few steps are through a massive puddle, ending any hopes of having dry feet for the drive home. wander around the car park clicking the cervos key hoping it hasnt been water damaged (luckily not) until the beautiful rear lights of the suzuki cervo wink at me off to my left. immediately strip half naked in the car park, hang all the wet shit in the back, salvage the technology from the sodden bag and breathe a sigh of relief that the maps still work. Ring up the mother to recount the tale, greeted with a stunned 'oh that was today! i thought you were going tomorrow:D' followed by hoots of laughter at the lack of preparation by a child she raised and was at one time a scout, inundated with the motto 'be prepared'.

Drive home topless, shoeless and hungry.

3190 metres, 40,000 steps, 30kms, 14 hours (pathetic pace).

In other news! Nothing else really happening since i began writing this monologue/deranged rant, Strong Typhoon no.10 is still inbound and looking to meet us around sunday for a lovely sunday roast and a slap on the nose probably.

If you read this far fair play! I will just dump all the photos when i get reconnected to the internet properly (there is no free wifi in this town to be found except for mcdonald which i do not want to lounge in regularly).

Stay tuned;)